Behind Stone Walls

Question: Does the Guardian Titanrealm exist? And if yes, what would it be like, and who would you put in there? (On a sidenote, what about Psychopomp? Same questions!)

Possibly?

While we can usually generally match up a purview to a Titanrealm, for the more "human" purviews this can sometimes be difficult. They're still important, universal mythological concepts that should be represented by a purview, but they aren't quite elemental forces the way some of the other purviews are, so it can be challenging to conceptualize what a Titanrealm dedicated to that idea would be like. Guardian, which has primarily positive connotations thanks to its associations with saving people from harm and preserving things from damage, is also difficult to titanize just because it's so often a thing we would think of as good, and therefore too benevolent for Titans.

However, there probably could be a Titanrealm related to Guardian. It probably wouldn't be the "Guardian realm", however, because that wouldn't make much sense, and we would suggest that it's possibly more of a place dedicated to boundaries, locks, walls and imprisonment - Guardian turned to negative purposes or taken to extremes, so that instead of saving people from danger it locks them down completely. A Titanrealm of Barriers, perhaps, or something like that. It would be populated by Titans who believed that protecting things meant controlling them utterly, or locking them away forever; or who wanted to protect things or people for bad or selfish reasons, for example kidnapping and locking up women to "save them" from actually living their lives and preserve them just for the Titan's pleasure; or who think of themselves as the ultimate authority over who deserves to be protected and who doesn't, and who intentionally let the weak suffer sometimes because they aren't deemed "worthy". We haven't done even a scrap of the research and work on such a realm we would need to do to give you a good potential roster of Titans who represent it, but we would look for figures who are older in generation, and primarily famous for protection and guardianship without being necessarily allies of the gods - Rhea, maybe, or the Jade Emperor. This might also be a great place to put the monotheistic or monotheistic-leaning Titans that Scion has trouble placing; Ahura Mazda might be a great fit for this kind of a place.

As for Psychopomp, we actually already wrote a Titanrealm based on that concept - it was the realm of Whedh, the Titan antagonist to the Arab pantheon the Alihah. Whedh is the Titan of Unity, an idea related to Psychopomp in that that purview is the purview of movement, travel and escorting the dead to their destination, and its ultimate expression is in making it literally possible to travel to and be anywhere in existence. Whedh goes a step further, as Titans are wont to do, and decides that all places should be the same place, thus making it impossible for anyone ever to need any other destination or have to travel any distance whatsoever.

Or exist, really, but that's the problem with Titans; they don't and can't moderate themselves. Even Titanrealms of positive places are, outside of those Avatars that represent positive forces within them, too uncontrolled and all-consuming to be truly safe or beneficial to things outside of them.

Errata

Question: I noticed that in your Alihah writeup Whedh has no favoured or banned Purviews. Is that a typo, or a deliberate decision, considering what Whedh is the Titanrealm of?

Oh, damn, no! That's a mistake and the realm's associated and banned purviews should have been listed at the beginning like those of all other Titans. Allah's writeup and the Henosic template offer some clues, but I apologize for not including the official rulings.

Whedh's favored purviews are Chaos, Justice, Mystery and Psychopomp. Chaos and Psychopomp are the two purviews that break down barriers and encourage the chaotic recombination of everything and anything, which is of course Whedh's ultimate goal. Mystery does the same for knowledge, causing anyone to be able to learn anything regardless of experience or division, and Justice works for Whedh's uncompromising belief in unification and the ultimate order that it brings.

Whedh's banned purviews are Guardian and Magic. Guardian is all about placing boundaries and blocking things from going where and when they wish, anathema to Whedh's desire to destroy such restrictions, and Magic, as the purview that controls the restricting bonds and activities of Fate, does the same thing in the realm of the occult.

And speaking of mistakes, the Henosic template states that creatures using it suffer piercing damage from attacks against them made with the Justice and Magic purviews. This is incorrect; replace Justice with Guardian.

Gah, I hate it when mistakes make it into the PDFs. Sorry, everybody!

It Burns Us!

Question: I love your Alihah write-up, but I'm not entirely sold on Unity as a Titan concept, so I was considering a Light Titanrealm, with Djinn (smokeless fire could be interpreted as Light) as Titanspawn, since as desert-dwelling nomads who love the night sky, they seem to have issues with the Sun. Does Allah have any solar connotations? Or do you think the whole idea is too mythically inaccurate?

Glad you enjoyed it! I can definitely see the appeal of setting the Alihah up as opposed to a Titanrealm of Light; they're the gods of one of a very few cultures that could be said to be opposed to the idea of the sun, since they live in a desert climate and do most of their traveling out from under the harsh eye of the unforgiving daystar. There aren't a lot of world religions that really demonize or even mildly dislike light, which is a concept almost universally associated with sunshine, truth and life.

Unfortunately, though, I don't know that I've got much to help you. The pre-Islamic Allah has no solar connotations that I know of; he's a god more associated with spirit and communication than anything else, with possibly minor sky associations thanks to an ancient reconstructed image of him as one of those great big sky-fathers everybody in the Mediterranean area seems to love so much. He's more similar to Ahura Mazda over in Persia than to any of the sky Titans, though, and has nothing in common with Aten other than the connection to monotheism (which happened in distinctly different ways and eras for the two figures). The Islamic Allah doesn't have any real connection to the sun, or to light in general for that matter, that I know of, either; by the time he's morphed into one of the big bad monotheistic powers of the modern world, he's almost exclusively about omnipotence rather than having any specific associations.

The Alihah and the ancient Arabs that worshiped them also weren't really all that opposed to the sun, which makes the connection difficult as well. It was inconvenient and overheating, but not something they considered malevolent, more a fact of life that they dealt with by minimizing their exposure to it, and since it's a constant and predictable danger it lacks the immediacy and enmity of other natural disasters like storms or earthquakes. Their solar deity, the goddess Shams, is not particularly important because of this image of the sun as dehydrator and heat-source rather than all-important giver of life, but she's still a positive figure with no particularly nasty associations that I'm aware of. The religion's closer to being annoyed with the fundamental concept of light than most others, but that's not saying much.

I wish I had something awesome to offer, but alas, the Arabian peninsula is just not cooperating today.

De-Unification Theory

Question: If some (very!) heroic Scion were to save Atarsamain from Whedh, what would be the reaction from the Alihah? From Ruda? Would there be any reward? I imagine the Scion would quickly get many friends. I've read your Alihah story, and I really want my Aesir Scion to go out there and save at least someone from Whedh.

Ambitious, but awesome! Saving someone from Whedh is a very tall order - dangerous, difficult, likely to change you forever - but not completely impossible.

Atarsamain and Nuha have been gone a very long time; they were swallowed by Whedh back in the first Titan war, and therefore haven't really existed except as part of Allah's realm for many centuries. They have no prayer of becoming themselves again (or even of remembering they had selves in the first place) without outside help, which is where your Scion can come in. He or she will have to organize an impressive outing of gods to get this done, but it definitely can be done.

You'll first need to find the right approximate "part" of Whedh to look for them; technically all of Whedh is the same place and it doesn't really have parts, so your Storyteller might rule that you can do this anywhere, but the popular Alihah legend that the throne of Allah is made of the stuff that was once the essence of absorbed gods is a good place to start if you need to look further. I would probably require some pretty hefty Occult, Mystery or other related rolls to try to latch onto the right goddesses - Whedh has swallowed many, many, many people over time, gods included, and it might be hard to find the specific deities you're trying to rescue when they're part of that huge composite. You'll also need a god to use the Wyrd, which is the only power great enough to find and separate the strands of Nuha's and Atarsamain's fates from the mass of Whedh that they are currently part of. Once you've done that, different Storytellers may want to run with different things that have to happen; you may need someone with a lot of Health to reconstruct new bodies for the fallen goddesses, warriors to fight off encroaching ghilan, psychopomps to help everyone escape before Allah (who may or may not be alerted as soon as you start doing this) from thundering down on everyone, or simply enough strength to drag these goddesses who haven't been separated from the realm since time immemorial physically away from it. It will no doubt be dangerous and harrowing - opposing a Titan in his own realm is a ballsy move indeed!

If you succeeded in such a thing, however, you would probably indeed be something of a hero. The Alihah can use every deity they can get, and they would undoubtedly be very glad to see the goddesses back on their side; poor Ruda's mental problems come from overexposure to Whedh and probably won't disappear, but even so he'd probably be overjoyed to be reunited with his family. You'd probably be considered an ally of the Alihah as a whole, and Ruda himself might offer you some reward if he has one - if you're a dude, hey, he's got this daughter you just rescued, so care for a marriage alliance? - or give you a promise of help at some time in the future when you need it.

Of course, there could be pretty potent downsides, too. Going into Whedh is exceptionally dangerous, which is why the Alihah haven't tried to rescue too many of their lost gods themselves - the whole time you're in there it will be trying to absorb you and your relics, and you're like to come out permanently different from when you went in. This is a danger for anyone you bring with you, too, and if one of your allies dies while helping you, you may have to deal with the weighty consequences among his friends, family and pantheon. Atarsamain and Nuha themselves may be slightly odd - even more than Ruda, they've not only been exposed to Whedh but actually wholly eaten by it, and they may not be entirely themselves when they return. Finally, Allah may come down in his wrath as a result of your theft - either head-on at the Alihah, who might or might not be in a position to scramble fast enough to deal with him, or at you or your home pantheon for this affront you've just perpetrated. (Though if that's the case, at least the Alihah will have another reason to like you - thanks for the breather, man!)

Nuha and Atarsamain are but two of the ancient Arab deities that have succumbed to Whedh's all-encompassing hunger. It's equally possible to rescue others, and depending on Storyteller decision, any number of minor, mostly-forgotten Arab gods might be in the great mass of Whedh waiting to be rediscovered. Most gods aren't going to be excited about the idea - that's a horrible hellscape that eats relics and destroys personalities! No one wants to go in there for some minor goddess who died millennia ago! - but a Scion with a silver enough tongue, a strong enough determination and a good enough argument could still make it happen.

Invest in Willpower, Integrity and Stamina, and take good friends. It's dangerous to go alone.